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William James
William James
4 months 6 days ago
Let any one try, I will...

Let any one try, I will not say to arrest, but to notice or attend to, the present moment of time. One of the most baffling experiences occurs. Where is it, this present? It has melted in our grasp, fled ere we could touch it, gone in the instant of becoming.

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Ch. 15
Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
4 months 3 weeks ago
What Heaven has conferred is called...

What Heaven has conferred is called The Nature; an accordance with this nature is called The Path of duty; the regulation of this path is called Instruction. The path may not be left for an instant. If it could be left, it would not be the path. On this account, the superior man does not wait till he sees things, to be cautious, nor till he hears things, to be apprehensive.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
6 days ago
There is not a sprig of...

There is not a sprig of grass that shoots uninteresting to me.

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Thomas Jefferson Letter (23 Dec 1790) to Martha Jefferson Randolph. Collected in B.L. Rayner (ed.), Sketches of the Life, Writings, and Opinions of Thomas Jefferson (1832), 192.
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 1 day ago
He who is subjected to a...

He who is subjected to a field of visibility, and who knows it, assumes responsibility for the constraints of power; he makes them play spontaneously upon himself; he inscribes in himself the power relation in which he simultaneously plays both roles; he becomes the principle of his own subjection.

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Part Three, Panopticism
Philosophical Maxims
Gaston Bachelard
Gaston Bachelard
2 months 4 weeks ago
A word is a bud attempting...

A word is a bud attempting to become a twig. How can one not dream while writing? It is the pen which dreams. The blank page gives the right to dream.

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Introduction, sect. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 1 week ago
The title wise is, for the...

The title wise is, for the most part, falsely applied. How can one be a wise man, if he does not know any better how to live than other men? - if he is only more cunning and intellectually subtle?

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p. 487
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 6 days ago
The man who renounces himself, comes...

The man who renounces himself, comes to himself.

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p. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
2 months 4 days ago
The public has yet to see...

The public has yet to see TV as TV. Broadcasters have no awareness of its potential. The movie people are just beginning to get a grasp on film.

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quoted in "Marshall McLuhan, Author, Dies; Declared 'Medium Is the Message'" by Alden Whitman, The New York Times, January 1, 1981
Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
4 months 6 days ago
I fancy I need more than...

I fancy I need more than another to speak (rather than write), with such a formidable tendency to the lapidary style. I build my house of boulders.

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Letter to Thomas Carlyle, 30 October 1841
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
3 months 6 days ago
The blindness of those who think...

The blindness of those who think it absurd to suppose that complex organic forms may have arisen by successive modifications out of simple ones becomes astonishing when we remember that complex organic forms are daily being thus produced. A tree differs from a seed immeasurably in every respect... Yet is the one changed in the course of a few years into the other: changed so gradually, that at no moment can it be said - Now the seed ceases to be, and the tree exists.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hermann Weyl
Hermann Weyl
2 weeks 2 days ago
A new development began for relativity...

A new development began for relativity theory after 1925 with its absorption into quantum physics. The first great success was scored by Dirac's quantum mechanical equations of the electron, which introduced a new sort of quantities, the spinors, besides the vectors and tensors into our physical theories. ...But difficulties of the gravest kind turned up when one passed from one electron or photon to the interaction among an indeterminate number of such particles. In spite of several advances a final solution of this problem is not yet in sight and may well require a deep modification of the foundation of quantum mechanics, such as would account in the same basic manner for the elementary electric charge e as relativity theory and our present quantum mechanics account for c and h.

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Preface to the First American Printing (1950) Note: see Paul Dirac, The Principles of Quantum Mechanics
Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
2 months 1 week ago
Well, what does "good" mean anyway...?...

Well, what does "good" mean anyway...? As Wittgenstein suggested, "good," like "game," has a family of meanings. Prominent among them is this one: "meets the criteria or standards of assessment or evaluation."

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P. 152.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months 2 weeks ago
For truth itself...
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Main Content / General
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 2 weeks ago
The custom of procuring abortions has...

The custom of procuring abortions has reached such appalling proportions in America as to be beyond belief... So great is the misery of the working classes that seventeen abortions are committed in every one hundred pregnancies.

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Mother Earth
Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
3 months 3 days ago
The assumption that the human psyche...

The assumption that the human psyche possesses layers that lie below consciousness is not likely to arouse serious opposition. But... there could just as well be layers lying above consciousness... The conscious mind can only claim a relatively central position and must put up with the fact that the unconscious psyche transcends and as it were surrounds it on all sides. Unconscious contents connect it backward with the physiological states on the one hand and archetypal data on the other. But it is extended forward by intuitions which are conditioned partly by archetypes and partly by subliminal perceptions depending on the relativity of time and space in the unconscious.

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p. 132
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
1 month 2 weeks ago
It is a paradoxical but profoundly...

It is a paradoxical but profoundly true and important principle of life that the most likely way to reach a goal is to be aiming not at that goal itself but at some more ambitious goal beyond it.

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Vol. 7 (1954). Also in Civilization on Trial (1957 ) p. 247
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
4 months 5 days ago
"Their own strength has betrayed them....

"Their own strength has betrayed them. They have [...] pulled down Deep Heaven on their heads."

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Ch. 13 : They Have Pulled Down Deep Heaven on Their Heads
Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
2 months 3 weeks ago
I also am other than what...

I also am other than what I imagine myself to be. To know this is forgiveness.

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p. 200
Philosophical Maxims
Polybius
Polybius
4 weeks ago
All things are subject to decay...

All things are subject to decay and change.

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The General History of Polybius as translated by James Hampton' (1762), Vol. II, pp. 177-178
Philosophical Maxims
Alexis de Tocqueville
Alexis de Tocqueville
3 months 1 week ago
In America a woman loses her...

In America a woman loses her independence for ever in the bonds of matrimony. While there is less constraint on girls there than anywhere else, a wife submits to stricter obligations. For the former, her father's house is a home of freedom and pleasure; for the latter, her husband's is almost a cloister.

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Book Three, Chapter X.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 day ago
It's not about...

It's not about telling people how to be, outside of supporting ideals that teach us what to avoid.

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Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 6 days ago
'Our kingdom go' is the necessary...

'Our kingdom go' is the necessary and unavoidable corollary of 'Thy kingdom come.' For the more there is of self, the less there is of God.

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Chapter VI - Mortification, Non-Attachment, Right Livelihood
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
2 months 4 weeks ago
It is no accident that all...

It is no accident that all democracies have put a high estimate upon education; that schooling has been their first care and enduring charge. Only through education can equality of opportunity be anything more than a phrase. Accidental inequalities of birth, wealth, and learning are always tending to restrict the opportunities of some as compared with those of others. Only free and continued education can counteract those forces which are always at work to restore, in however changed a form, feudal oligarchy. Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.

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"The Need of an Industrial Education in an Industrial Democracy," Manual Training and Vocational Education17 (1916); also Middle Works 10: 137-143.
Philosophical Maxims
Arnold J. Toynbee
Arnold J. Toynbee
1 month 2 weeks ago
There is no such thing as...

There is no such thing as gratitude in international politics.

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Abridgement of Vols. 7-10 by D. C. Somervell
Philosophical Maxims
David Hume
David Hume
4 months 1 week ago
In all determinations of morality, this...

In all determinations of morality, this circumstance of public utility is ever principally in view; and wherever disputes arise, either in philosophy or common life, concerning the bounds of duty, the question cannot, by any means, be decided with greater certainty, than by ascertaining, on any side, the true interests of mankind. If any false opinion, embraced from appearances, has been found to prevail; as soon as farther experience and sounder reasoning have given us juster notions of human affairs, we retract our first sentiment, and adjust anew the boundaries of moral good and evil.

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§ 2.17 : Of Benevolence, Pt. 2
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
If human nature were unchangeable, as...

If human nature were unchangeable, as ignorant people still suppose it to be, the situation would indeed be hopeless.

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Ch. 17: Some Prospects: Cheerful and Otherwise
Philosophical Maxims
Walter Lippmann
Walter Lippmann
1 month 3 days ago
The man who says that the...

The man who says that the world is a machine has really advanced no further than to say that he is so well satisfied with the analogy that he is through with searching any further.

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Ch. VI: "The Drama of Destiny", §5, p. 130.
Philosophical Maxims
Leszek Kołakowski
Leszek Kołakowski
4 weeks 1 day ago
While the positivists were proclaiming the...

While the positivists were proclaiming the end "once and for all" of unverifiable metaphysical systems and speculative philosophy in general, new doctrines in flagrant contradiction to those ideals have sprung up one after the other. Positivists see no more in this development than evidence of human stupidity, not any reflection on themselves.

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Chapter Eight, Logical Empiricism, p. 198
Philosophical Maxims
Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley
4 months 6 days ago
Several excuses are always less convincing...

Several excuses are always less convincing than one.

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Ch. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 3 weeks ago
The highest proof of virtue is...

The highest proof of virtue is to possess boundless power without abusing it.

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The Life and Writings of Addison', The Edinburgh Review (July 1843), quoted in T. B. Macaulay, Critical and Historical Essays Contributed to The Edinburgh Review: A New Edition (1852), p. 706
Philosophical Maxims
Georges Sorel
Georges Sorel
2 weeks 2 days ago
Sorel the Dreyfusard eventually developed into...

Sorel the Dreyfusard eventually developed into a bitter anti-semite, calling upon Europe to defend itself against the Jewish peril in the same way as America fought the Yellow peril; he blamed the Chekist terror on the Jewish members of the Bolshevik party.

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Jacob Talmon, "The Myth of the Nation and the Vision of Revolution: The Origins of Ideological Polarization in the 20th Century ", University of California Press, 1981, p. 474
Philosophical Maxims
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Ludwig Wittgenstein
4 months 2 days ago
Like everything metaphysical the harmony between...

Like everything metaphysical the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language.

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§ 112
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Jefferson
Thomas Jefferson
6 days ago
Commerce with all nations, alliance with...

Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto.

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Letter to Thomas Lomax
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
2 months 4 weeks ago
So we are always esthetically disappointed...

So we are always esthetically disappointed when the sensuous qualities and the intellectual properties of an object do not coalesce.

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p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Emperor Julian
Emperor Julian
2 weeks 1 day ago
We must not suppose any corporeal...

We must not suppose any corporeal conjunction or marriage in the case - all which are merely the sportive fables of Poetry; but must hold the father and the producer of that Being as something most divine and super-eminent. Of such a nature is He who is above all things, around whom, and by reason of whom, all things do subsist. But Homer calls him by his father's name, "Hyperion," in order to show that he is independent, and not subjected to any constraint.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Putnam
2 months 2 weeks ago
The real significance of the Russell...

The real significance of the Russell paradox, from the standpoint of the modal-logic picture, is this: it shows that no concrete structure can be a standard model for the naive conception of the totality of all sets; for any concrete structure has a possible extension that contains more 'sets'. (If we identify sets with the points that represent them in the various possible concrete structures, we might say: it is not possible for all possible sets to exist in any one world!) Yet set theory does not become impossible. Rather, set theory becomes the study of what must hold in, e.g. any standard model for Zermelo set theory.

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Mathematics without foundations
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
All traditional logic habitually assumes that...

All traditional logic habitually assumes that precise symbols are being employed. It is therefore not applicable to this terrestial life but only to an imagined celestial existence... logic takes us nearer to heaven than other studies.

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Vagueness', first published in The Australasian Journal of Psychology and Philosophy, 1 June, 1923
Philosophical Maxims
Horace
Horace
3 months 3 weeks ago
Once a word….

Once a word has been allowed to escape, it cannot be recalled.

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Book I, epistle xviii, line 71
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 1 week ago
My life is like a stroll...

My life is like a stroll upon the beach, As near the ocean's edge as I can go.

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"The Fisher's Boy", in Edmund Clarence Stedman (ed.) An American Anthology, 1787-1900, Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Co., 1900
Philosophical Maxims
Democritus
Democritus
3 months 3 weeks ago
The friendship of one wise man...

The friendship of one wise man is better than the friendship of a host of fools.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
4 months 1 day ago
Most of the texts... preserved from...

Most of the texts... preserved from this period come from writers... either... affiliated with the aristocratic party, or... distrustful of democratic or radically democratic institutions.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 week ago
In all affairs - love, religion,...

In all affairs - love, religion, politics, or business - it's a healthy idea, now and then, to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted.

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As quoted in The Reader's Digest, Vol. 37 (1940), p. 90; no specific source given.
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
3 months 2 days ago
The mind that puts everything in...

The mind that puts everything in question, reaches, after a thousand interrogations, an almost total inertia, a situation which the inert, in fact, knows from the start, by instinct. For what is inertia but a congenital perplexity?

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Philosophical Maxims
John Searle
John Searle
2 months 1 week ago
In many cases it is a...

In many cases it is a matter for decision and not a simple matter of fact whether x understands y; and so on.

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Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 1 week ago
All is in a man's hands...

All is in a man's hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that's an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most. Variant translation: "Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most."

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Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months 6 days ago
An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance...

An unlearned carpenter of my acquaintance once said in my hearing: "There is very little difference between one man and another; but what little there is, is very important." This distinction seems to me to go to the root of the matter.

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"The Importance of Individuals"
Philosophical Maxims
William Whewell
William Whewell
6 days ago
In the 'Induction of Causes' the...

In the 'Induction of Causes' the principal maxim is, that we must be careful to possess, and to apply, with perfect clearness, the Fundamental Idea on which the Induction depends. The Induction of Substance, of Force, of Polarity, go beyond mere laws of phenomena, and may be considered as the Induction cf Causes. The Cause of certain phenomena being inferred, we are led to inquire into the Cause of this Cause, which inquiry must be conducted in the same manner as the previous one; and thus we have the Induction of Ulterior Causes.

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Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
3 months 1 week ago
Laws, like houses, lean on one...

Laws, like houses, lean on one another.

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From the Tracts Relative to the Laws Against Popery in Ireland (c. 1766), not published during Burke's lifetime.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 3 weeks ago
Missionaries, whether of philosophy or of...

Missionaries, whether of philosophy or of religion, rarely make rapid way, unless their preachings fall in with the prepossessions of the multitude of shallow thinkers, or can be made to serve as a stalking-horse for the promotion of the practical aims of the still larger multitude, who do not profess to think much, but are quite certain they want a great deal.

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Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
5 months 1 week ago
The venerability, reliability, and utility of...
The venerability, reliability, and utility of truth is something which a person demonstrates for himself from the contrast with the liar, whom no one trusts and everyone excludes. As a "rational" being, he now places his behavior under the control of abstractions. He will no longer tolerate being carried away by sudden impressions, by intuitions.
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Philosophical Maxims
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