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Epictetus
Epictetus
6 months 2 weeks ago
Some of their faults people readily...

Some of their faults people readily admit, but others not so readily.

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Book II, ch. 21, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months ago
The only thing the young should...

The only thing the young should be taught is that there is virtually nothing to be hoped for from life. One dreams of a Catalogue of Disappointments which would include all the disillusionments reserved for each and every one of us, to be posted in the schools.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
3 months 2 weeks ago
I neither deny nor affirm the...

I neither deny nor affirm the immortality of man. I see no reason for believing in it, but, on the other hand, I have no means of disproving it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
7 months 1 day ago
Of all the schools of patience...

Of all the schools of patience and lucidity, creation is the most effective. It is also the staggering evidence of man's sole dignity: the dogged revolt against his condition, perseverance in an effort considered sterile. It calls for a daily effort, self-mastery, a precise estimate of the limits of truth, measure, and strength. It constitutes an ascesis. All that "for nothing," in order to repeat and mark time. But perhaps the great work of art has less importance in itself than in the ordeal it demands of a man and the opportunity it provides him of overcoming his phantoms and approaching a little closer to his naked reality.

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Philosophical Maxims
Sydney Smith
Sydney Smith
2 months 2 weeks ago
When I hear any man talk...

When I hear any man talk of an unalterable law, the only effect it produces upon me is to convince me that he is an unalterable fool.

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Peter Plymley's Letters (1808), Letter IV
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
5 months ago
It is ...easy to be certain....

It is ...easy to be certain. One has only to be sufficiently vague.

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Vol. IV, par. 237
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months ago
Man starts over again everyday, in...

Man starts over again everyday, in spite of all he knows, against all he knows.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
5 months 4 weeks ago
The usage of the words "public"...

The usage of the words "public" and "public sphere" betrays a multiplicity of concurrent meanings. Their origins go back to various historical phases and, when applied synchronically to the conditions of a bourgeois society that is industrially advanced and constituted as a social-welfare state, they fuse into a clouded amalgam. Yet the very conditions that make the inherited language seem inappropriate appear to require these words, however confused their employment.

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p. 1 as cited in: Gandy, M (1997) "Ecology, modernity and the intellectual legacy of the Frankfurt School". In: Light, A and Smith, JM, (eds.) Space, Place and Environmental Ethics. p. 240
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
4 months 2 weeks ago
He was then in his fifty-fourth...

He was then in his fifty-fourth year, when even in the case of poets reason and passion begin to discuss a peace treaty and usually conclude it not very long afterwards.

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B 30
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 3 weeks ago
The theory of Communism...
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Main Content / General
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
4 months ago
If you want to do evil,...

If you want to do evil, science provides the most powerful weapons to do evil; but equally, if you want to do good, science puts into your hands the most powerful tools to do so. The trick is to want the right things, then science will provide you with the most effective methods of achieving them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein
1 month 3 weeks ago
We shall, therefore, assume the...

We shall, therefore, assume the complete physical equivalence of a gravitational field and a corresponding acceleration of the reference system.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
3 months 2 weeks ago
A small beginning has led us...

A small beginning has led us to a great ending. If I were to put the bit of chalk with which we started into the hot but obscure flame of burning hydrogen, it would presently shine like the sun. It seems to me that this physical metamorphosis is no false image of what has been the result of our subjecting it to a jet of fervent, though nowise brilliant, thought to-night. It has become luminous, and its clear rays, penetrating the abyss of the remote past, have brought within our ken some stages of the evolution of the earth. And in the shifting "without haste, but without rest" of the land and sea, as in the endless variation of the forms assumed by living beings, we have observed nothing but the natural product of the forces originally possessed by the substance of the universe.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
6 months 2 weeks ago
If any one will piously and...

If any one will piously and soberly consider the sermon which our Lord Jesus spoke on the mount, as we read it in the Gospel according to Matthew, I think that he will find in it, so far as regards the highest morals, a perfect standard of the Christian life: and this we do not rashly venture to promise, but gather it from the very words of the Lord Himself. For the sermon itself is brought to a close in such a way, that it is clear there are in it all the precepts which go to mould the life. He has sufficiently indicated, as I think, that these sayings which He uttered on the mount so perfectly guide the life of those who may be willing to live according to them, that they may justly be compared to one building upon a rock.

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On the Sermon on the Mount, as translated by William Findlay (1888), Book I, Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
John Herschel
John Herschel
2 months 1 week ago
Were I to pray for a...

Were I to pray for a taste which should stand me in stead under every variety of circumstances, and be a source of happiness and cheerfulness to me during life, and a shield against its ills, however things might go amiss and the world frown upon me, it would be a taste for reading... Give a man this taste, and the means of gratifying it, and you can hardly fail of making him a happy man; unless, indeed, you put into his hands a most perverse selection of books. You place him in contact with the best society in every period of history,-with the wisest, the wittiest, the tenderest, the bravest, and the purest characters who have adorned humanity. You make him a denizen of all nations, a contemporary of all ages. The world has been created for him.

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Address on the opening of the Eton Library (1833) as quoted in A History of Inventions, Discoveries and Origins (1846) by John Beckmann, Tr. William Johnston, Vol. 1, frontispiece.
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
4 months 3 weeks ago
In most cases the esthetic objection...

In most cases the esthetic objection to doses of morals and of economic or political propaganda in works of art will be found upon analysis to reside in the over-weighing of certain values at the expense of others until, except for those in a similar stare of one-sides enthusiasm, weariness rather than refreshment sets in.

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p. 188
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 weeks ago
To me, in these circumstances, that...

To me, in these circumstances, that of "Hero-worship" becomes a fact inexpressibly precious; the most solacing fact one sees in the world at present. There is an everlasting hope in it for the management of the world. Had all traditions, arrangements, creeds, societies that men ever instituted, sunk away, this would remain. The certainty of Heroes being sent us; our faculty, our necessity, to reverence Heroes when sent: it shines like a polestar through smoke-clouds, dust-clouds, and all manner of down-rushing and conflagration.

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Philosophical Maxims
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
4 months 6 days ago
I sometimes wondered what the use...

I sometimes wondered what the use of any of the arts was. The best thing I could come up with was what I call the canary in the coal mine theory of the arts. This theory says that artists are useful to society because they are so sensitive. They are super-sensitive. They keel over like canaries in poison coal mines long before more robust types realize that there is any danger whatsoever.

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Physicist, Purge Thyself in the Chicago Tribune Magazine
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 3 weeks ago
But it has been necessary, for...

But it has been necessary, for the benefit of the social order, to convert religion into a kind of police system, and hence hell. Oriental or Greek Christianity is predominantly eschatological, Protestantism predominantly ethical, and Catholicism is a compromise between the two, although with the eschatological element predominating.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle
2 months 3 weeks ago
Curious, if we will reflect on...

Curious, if we will reflect on it, this of having no books. Except by what he could see for himself, or hear of by uncertain rumor of speech in the obscure Arabian Desert, he could know nothing. The wisdom that had been before him or at a distance from him in the world, was in a manner as good as not there for him. Of the great brother souls, flame-beacons through so many lands and times, no one directly communicates with this great soul. He is alone there, deep down in the bosom of the Wilderness; has to grow up so,-alone with Nature and his own Thoughts. But, from an early age, he had been remarked as a thoughtful man.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
4 months 3 weeks ago
Man alone has the power of...

Man alone has the power of self-realization, the power to be a self-determining subject in all processes of becoming, for he alone has an understanding of potentialities and a knowledge of 'notions.' His very existence is the process of actualizing his potentialities, of molding his life according to the notions of reason.

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P. 9
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
4 months 3 weeks ago
Ether is, in effect, a merely...

Ether is, in effect, a merely hypothetical entity, valuable only in so far as it explains that which by means of it we endeavor to explain - light, electricity, or universal gravitation - and only so far as these facts cannot be explained in any other way. In like manner the idea of God is also an hypothesis, valuable only in so far as it enables us to explain that which by means of it we endeavor to explain - the essence and existence of the Universe - and only so long as these cannot be explained in any other way. And since in reality we explain the Universe neither better nor worse with this idea than without it, the idea of God, the supreme petitio principii, is valueless.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
5 months 2 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
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
4 months 4 weeks ago
The general co-operation of all members...

The general co-operation of all members of society for the purpose of planned exploitation of the forces of production, the expansion of production to the point where it will satisfy the needs of all, the abolition of a situation in which the needs of some are satisfied at the expense of the needs of others, the complete liquidation of classes and their conflicts, the rounded development of the capacities of all members of society through the elimination of the present division of labor, through industrial education, through engaging in varying activities, through the participation by all in the enjoyments produced by all, through the combination of city and country - these are the main consequences of the abolition of private property.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
3 months 3 weeks ago
Hayek fails to account either for...

Hayek fails to account either for the passion among intellectuals for equality, or for the resulting success of socialists and their egalitarian successors in driving the liberal idea from the stage of politics. This passion for equality is not a new thing, and indeed pre-dates socialism by many centuries, finding its most influential expression in the writings of Rousseau. There is no consensus as to how equality might be achieved, what it would consist in if achieved, or why it is so desirable in the first place. But no argument against the cogency or viability of the idea has the faintest chance of being listened to or discussed by those who have fallen under its spell.

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Hayek and conservatism, in Edward Feser (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hayek
Philosophical Maxims
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Anne Morrow Lindbergh
3 months 2 weeks ago
Rollers on the beach, wind in...

Rollers on the beach, wind in the pines, the slow flapping of herons across sand dunes, drown out the hectic rhythms of city and suburb, time tables and schedules. One falls under their spell, relaxes, stretches out prone. One becomes, in fact, like the element on which one lies, flattened by the sea; bare, open, empty as the beach, erased by today's tides of all yesterday's scribblings.

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Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 months 1 day ago
Be straightforward. Look at things like...

Be straightforward. Look at things like a man, like a human being, like a citizen, like a mortal.

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(Hays translation) IV, 4
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
7 months 2 days ago
Men grew desperate and the border...

Men grew desperate and the border between bitter frustration and wild destruction is sometimes easily crossed.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
4 months 3 weeks ago
The man old in days will...

The man old in days will not hesitate to ask a small child seven days old about the place of life, and he will live. For many who are first will become last, and they will become one and the same.

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert A. Simon
Herbert A. Simon
4 months 1 week ago
The techniques of the practitioner are...

The techniques of the practitioner are usually called 'synthetic'. He designs by organizing known principles and devices into larger systems.

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Simon (1945, p. 353); As cited in: Philosophy of Technology and Engineering Sciences (2009) p. 425.
Philosophical Maxims
Plutarch
Plutarch
5 months 3 weeks ago
Thrasyllus the Cynic begged a drachm...

Thrasyllus the Cynic begged a drachm of Antigonus. "That," said he, "is too little for a king to give." "Why, then," said the other, "give me a talent." "And that," said he, "is too much for a Cynic (or, for a dog) to receive."

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45 Antigonus I
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
4 months 2 days ago
The press is a group confessional...

The press is a group confessional form that provides communal participation. The book is a private confessional form that provides a "point of view."

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(p. 204)
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
5 months 5 days ago
Those who give and those who...

Those who give and those who receive arbitrary power are alike criminal; and there is no man but is bound to resist it to the best of his power, wherever it shall show its face to the world. It is a crime to bear it, when it can be rationally shaken off. Nothing but absolute impotence can justify men in not resisting it to the utmost of their ability.

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Speech in opening the impeachment of Warren Hastings (16 February 1788), quoted in The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Volume the Ninth (1899), p. 458
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
6 months 3 days ago
Friendship, I have said, is born...

Friendship, I have said, is born at the moment when one man says to another "What! You too? I thought that no one but myself..."

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Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
4 months 3 weeks ago
The subversive character of truth inflicts...

The subversive character of truth inflicts upon thought an imperative quality. Logic centers on judgments which are, as demonstrative propositions, imperatives, - the predicative "is" implies an "ought." ... Verification of the proposition involves a process in fact as well as in thought: (S) must become that which it is. The categorical statement thus turns into a categorical imperative; it does not state a fact but the necessity to bring about a fact. For example, it could be read as follows: man is not (in fact) free, endowed with inalienable rights, etc., but he ought to be.

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pp. 132-133
Philosophical Maxims
Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius
2 months 1 day ago
That which makes the man no...

That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.

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IV, 8
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
6 months 1 week ago
Some impose upon the world that...

Some impose upon the world that they believe that which they do not; others, more in number, make themselves believe that they believe, not being able to penetrate into what it is to believe.

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Book II, Ch. 12. Apology for Raimond Sebond
Philosophical Maxims
Alan Watts
Alan Watts
2 months 2 weeks ago
Have you really looked at a...

Have you really looked at a seashell? There's not an aesthetic fault in it anywhere - it's absolutely perfect. Now, do you think that shells look at each other and critique each other's appearance? "Well, your markings are a little crooked and not very well spaced." Of course not, but that's what we do. Every one of us is marvellous and complicated and interesting and gorgeous just as we are. Really take a look at another person's eyes. They are jewelry beyond compare - just beautiful!

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p. 42
Philosophical Maxims
George Santayana
George Santayana
4 months 3 weeks ago
Culture is on the horns of...

Culture is on the horns of this dilemma: if profound and noble, it must remain rare, if common, it must become mean.

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Ch. IV: The Aristocratic Ideal
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
6 months 5 days ago
We tend to believe the premises...

We tend to believe the premises because we can see that their consequences are true, instead of believing the consequences because we know the premises to be true. But the inferring of premises from consequences is the essence of induction; thus the method in investigating the principles of mathematics is really an inductive method, and is substantially the same as the method of discovering general laws in any other science.

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"The Regressive Method of Discovering the Premises of Mathematics" (1907), in Essays in Analysis (1973), pp. 273-274
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
4 months 3 weeks ago
The novel, the novel proper that...

The novel, the novel proper that is, is about people's treatment of each other, and so it is about human values.

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Ch. 10, p. 138
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
6 months 5 days ago
If I had been by nature...

If I had been by nature extremely quick of apprehension, or had possessed a very accurate and retentive memory or were of a remarkably active and energetic character, the trial would not be conclusive; but in all these natural gifts I am rather below than above par; what I could do, could assuredly be done by any boy or girl of average capacity and healthy physical constitution: and if I have accomplished anything, I owe it, among other fortunate circumstances, to the fact that through the early training bestowed on me by my father, I started, I may fairly say, with an advantage of a quarter of a century over my contemporaries.

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(pp. 30-31)
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Engels
Friedrich Engels
4 months 4 weeks ago
I have never seen a class...

I have never seen a class so deeply demoralised, so incurably debased by selfishness, so corroded within, so incapable of progress, as the English bourgeoisie; and I mean by this, especially the bourgeoisie proper, particularly the Liberal, Corn Law repealing bourgeoisie. For it nothing exists in this world, except for the sake of money, itself not excluded. It knows no bliss save that of rapid gain, no pain save that of losing gold. In the presence of this avarice and lust of gain, it is not possible for a single human sentiment or opinion to remain untainted.

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p. 275
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
6 months 4 days ago
What we really need the poet's...

What we really need the poet's and orator's help to keep alive in us is not, then, the common and gregarious courage which Robert Shaw showed when he marched with you, men of the Seventh Regiment. It is that more lonely courage which he showed when he dropped his warm commission in the glorious Second to head your dubious fortunes, negroes of the Fifty-fourth. That lonely kind of courage (civic courage as we call it in times of peace) is the kind of valor to which the monuments of nations should most of all be reared.

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Robert Gould Shaw: Oration upon the Unveiling of the Shaw Monument, 31 May 1897
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
5 months 2 days ago
Friendship and domestic happiness are continually...

Friendship and domestic happiness are continually praised; yet how little is there of either in the world, because it requires more cultivation of mind to keep awake affection, even in our own hearts, than the common run of people suppose. Besides, few like to be seen as they really are; and a degree of simplicity, and of undisguised confidence, which, to uninterested observers, would almost border on weakness, is the charm, nay the essence of love or friendship, all the bewitching graces of childhood again appearing.

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Letter 12
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
5 months 2 weeks ago
Envy has been, is, and shall...

Envy has been, is, and shall be, the destruction of many. What is there, that Envy hath not defamed, or Malice left undefiled? Truly, no good thing.

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Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
5 months ago
"Do I look like someone who...

"Do I look like someone who has something to do here on Earth?" - That's what I'd like to answer the busybodies who inquire into my activities.

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Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
6 months 2 weeks ago
The essence of the good is...

The essence of the good is a certain kind of moral purpose, and that of the evil is a certain kind of moral purpose.

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Book I, ch. 29, 1
Philosophical Maxims
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
5 months 1 week ago
If all things are in common...

If all things are in common among friends, the most precious is Wisdom. What can Juno give which thou canst not receive from Wisdom? What mayest thou admire in Venus which thou mayest not also contemplate in Wisdom? Her beauty is not small, for the lord of all things taketh delight in her. Her I have loved and diligently sought from my youth up.

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As quoted in Giordano Bruno : His Life and Thought (1950) by Dorothea Waley Singer
Philosophical Maxims
John Gray
John Gray
3 months 1 week ago
The repression of liberty that took...

The repression of liberty that took place in the countries in which Communist regimes were established cannot be adequately explained as a product of backwardness, or of errors in the application of Marxian theory. It was the result of a resolute attempt to realize an Enlightenment utopia - a condition of society in which no serious form of conflict any longer exists.

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'Isaiah Berlin: The Value of Decency' (p.99)
Philosophical Maxims
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