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Peter Singer
Peter Singer
2 months 2 weeks ago
Becoming a vegetarian is not merely...

Becoming a vegetarian is not merely a symbolic gesture. Nor is it an attempt to isolate oneself from the ugly realities of the world, to keep oneself pure and so without responsibility for the cruelty and carnage all around. Becoming a vegetarian is a highly practical and effective step one can take toward ending both the killing of nonhuman animals and the infliction of suffering upon them.

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Ch. 4: Becoming a Vegetarian
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 1 week ago
Haikus allow the whole world to...

Haikus allow the whole world to appear within things.

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Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
2 months 1 week ago
Time is the soul of this...

Time is the soul of this world.

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As quoted in Wisdom (2002) by Desmond MacHale
Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
3 weeks 6 days ago
Don't turn back when you are...

Don't turn back when you are just at the goal.

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Maxim 580
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month ago
We measure the earth, sun, stars,...

We measure the earth, sun, stars, and ocean depths. We burrow into the depths of the earth for gold. We search for rivers and mountains on the moon. We discover new stars and know their magnitudes. We sound the depths of gorges and build clever machines. Each day brings a new invention. What don't we think of! What can't we do! But there is something else, the most important thing of all, that we are missing. We do not know exactly what it is. We are like a small child who knows he does not feel well but cannot explain why. We are uneasy, because we know a lot of superfluous facts; but we do not know what is really important-ourselves.

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p. 10
Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 3 weeks ago
Thou sayest that I am a...

Thou sayest that I am a king. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice.

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18:37, (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months ago
"No human laws are of any...

"No human laws are of any validity if contrary to the law of nature; and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority mediately or immediately from this original." Thus writes Blackstone, to whom let all honour be given for having so far outseen the ideas of his time; and, indeed, we may say of our time. A good antidote, this, for those political superstitions which so widely prevail. A good check upon that sentiment of power-worship which still misleads us by magnifying the prerogatives of constitutional governments as it once did those of monarchs. Let men learn that a legislature is not "our God upon earth," though, by the authority they ascribe to it, and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is at the best borrowed.

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Pt. III, Ch. 19 : The Right to Ignore the State, § 2
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 3 weeks ago
Religion is more conservative than any...

Religion is more conservative than any other aspect of human life.

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Philosophical Maxims
Arthur Schopenhauer
Arthur Schopenhauer
3 months 1 day ago
Childish and altogether ludicrous is what...

Childish and altogether ludicrous is what you yourself are and all philosophers; and if a grown-up man like me spends fifteen minutes with fools of this kind, it is merely a way of passing the time. I've now got more important things to do. Goodbye!

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Thrasymachus, in On the Indestructibility of our Essential Being by Death, in Essays and Aphorisms (1970) as translated by R. J. Hollingdale, p. 76
Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 4 days ago
II. The tax which each individual...

II. The tax which each individual is bound to pay ought to be certain, and not arbitrary.

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Chapter II, Part II, p. 892.
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
2 weeks 4 days ago
He had a head which statuaries...

He had a head which statuaries loved to copy, and a foot the deformity of which the beggars in the streets mimicked.

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p. 313
Philosophical Maxims
Friedrich Nietzsche
Friedrich Nietzsche
4 months 2 days ago
All that exists that can be...
All that exists that can be denied deserves to be denied; and being truthful means: to believe in an existence that can in no way be denied and which is itself true and without falsehood.
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Philosophical Maxims
Plato
Plato
3 months 4 weeks ago
So when the universe was quickened...

So when the universe was quickened with soul, God was well pleased; and he bethought him to make it yet more like its type. And whereas the type is eternal and nought that is created can be eternal, he devised for it a moving image of abiding eternity, which we call time. And he made days and months and years, which are portions of time; and past and future are forms of time, though we wrongly attribute them also to eternity. For of eternal Being we ought not to say 'it was', 'it shall be', but 'it is' alone: and in like manner we are wrong in saying 'it is' of sensible things which become and perish; for these are ever fleeting and changing, having their existence in time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
1 month 3 weeks ago
Keep on, then, seeking first the...

Keep on, then, seeking first the Kingdom and his righteousness, and all these other things will be added to you. So never be anxious about the next day, for the next day will have its own anxieties. Each day has enough of its own troubles.

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Matthew 6:33-34, New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures
Philosophical Maxims
Peter Singer
Peter Singer
2 months 2 weeks ago
Animal Liberation is Human Liberation too....

Animal Liberation is Human Liberation too.

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Preface
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 2 weeks ago
Only the feeble resign themselves to...

Only the feeble resign themselves to final death and substitute some other desire for the longing for personal immortality. In the strong the zeal for perpetuity overrides the doubt of realizing it, and their superabundance of life overflows upon the other side of death.

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Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 1 week ago
Power is more 'spacious' than violence....

Power is more 'spacious' than violence. And violence becomes power if it 'gives itself more time.' Looked at from this perspective, power rests on an excess of space and time.

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Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 1 week ago
Human knowledge and human power meet...

Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.

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Aphorism 3
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
3 months 1 week ago
In the same manner as we...

In the same manner as we are cautioned by religion to show our faith by our works we may very properly apply the principle to philosophy, and judge of it by its works; accounting that to be futile which is unproductive, and still more so, if instead of grapes and olives it yield but the thistle and thorns of dispute and contention.

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Aphorism 73
Philosophical Maxims
Desiderius Erasmus
Desiderius Erasmus
3 months 1 week ago
As to the people; in all...

As to the people; in all these countries the greater part of the people certainly detest war, and most devoutly wish for peace. A very few of them, indeed, whose unnatural happiness depends upon the public misery, may wish for war; but be it yours to decide, whether it is equitable or not, that the unprincipled selfishness of such wretches should have more weight than the anxious wishes of all good men united.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas
2 months 3 weeks ago
The interpretation of a case is...

The interpretation of a case is corroborated only by the successful continuation of a self-formative process, that is by the completion of self-reflection, and not in any unmistakable way by what the patient says or how he behaves.

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p. 266
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Paine
Thomas Paine
3 months 2 days ago
When at first thought we think...

When at first thought we think of a creator our ideas appear to us undefined and confused; but if we reason philosophically, those ideas can be easily arranged and simplified. It is a Being, whose power is equal to his will.

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A Discourse, &c. &c.
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
3 months ago
As for my own business, even...

As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is most correct.

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p. 486
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Nagel
Thomas Nagel
2 months 2 weeks ago
Eventually, I believe, current attempts to...

Eventually, I believe, current attempts to understand the mind by analogy with man-made computers that can perform superbly some of the same external tasks as conscious beings will be recognized as a gigantic waste of time.

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p. 16.
Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
2 months 4 days ago
Every attempt to refer chemical questions...

Every attempt to refer chemical questions to mathematical doctrines must be considered, now and always, profoundly irrational, as being contrary to the nature of the phenomena. . . . but if the employment of mathematical analysis should ever become so preponderant in chemistry (an aberration which is happily almost impossible) it would occasion vast and rapid retrogradation....

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Philosophical Maxims
Albert Camus
Albert Camus
3 months 3 weeks ago
One recognizes one's course by discovering...

One recognizes one's course by discovering the paths that stray from it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Carl Jung
Carl Jung
1 month 3 weeks ago
Every interpretation is hypothetical, for it...

Every interpretation is hypothetical, for it is a mere attempt to read an unfamiliar text. An obscure dream, taken by itself, can rarely be interpreted with any certainty, so that I attach little importance to the interpretation of single dreams. With a series of dreams we can have more confidence in our interpretations, for the later dreams correct the mistakes we have made m handling those that went before. We are also better able, in a dream series, to recognize the important contents and basic themes.

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p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
How many disappointments are conducive to...

How many disappointments are conducive to bitterness? One or a thousand, depending on the subject.

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Philosophical Maxims
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months ago
I trust a good deal to...

I trust a good deal to common fame, as we all must. If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.

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February 1855
Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
1 month ago
Despite the fact that the doctors...

Despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him, and gave him medicines to drink, he recovered.

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[sometimes quoted as "Though the doctors treated him, let his blood, and gave him medications to drink, he nevertheless recovered."] Bk. XV, ch. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Epicurus
Epicurus
3 months 2 weeks ago
Since, of desires some are natural...

Since, of desires some are natural and necessary; others natural, but not necessary; and others neither natural nor necessary, but the offspring of false judgment; it must be the office of temperance to gratify the first class, as far as nature requires: to restrain the second within the bounds of moderation; and, as to the third, resolutely to oppose, and, if possible, entirely repress them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
3 weeks 2 days ago
Take any aspect of the Western...

Take any aspect of the Western inheritance of which our ancestors were proud, and you will find university courses devoted to deconstructing it. Take any positive feature of our political and cultural inheritance, and you will find concerted efforts in both the media and the academy to place it in quotation marks, and make it look like an imposture or a deceit.

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(p. 40)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
3 months 1 day ago
Nine-tenths of the activities of a...

Nine-tenths of the activities of a modern Government are harmful; therefore the worse they are performed, the better.

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The Problem of China (1922), Ch. XII: The Chinese Character
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
3 months ago
The writers by whom, more than...

The writers by whom, more than by any others, a new mode of political thinking was brought home to me, were those of the St. Simonian school in France. In 1829 and 1830 I became acquainted with some of their writings. They were then only in the earlier stages of their speculations. They had not yet dressed out their philosophy as a religion, nor had they organized their scheme of Socialism. They were just beginning to question the principle of hereditary property. I was by no means prepared to go with them even this length; but I was greatly struck with the connected view which they for the first time presented to me, of the natural order of human progress; and especially with their division of all history into organic periods and critical periods.

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(p. 163)
Philosophical Maxims
Iris Murdoch
Iris Murdoch
1 month 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
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
3 months 4 days ago
Nobody ever saw a dog make...

Nobody ever saw a dog make a fair and deliberate exchange of one bone for another with another dog.

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Chapter II, p. 14.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
3 months ago
Everything great glitters, glitter begets ambition,...

Everything great glitters, glitter begets ambition, and ambition can easily have caused the inspiration or what we thought to be inspiration. But reason can no longer restrain one who is lured by the fury of ambition. He tumbles where his vehement drive calls him; no longer does he choose his position, but rather chance and luster determine it.

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Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
2 months 4 weeks ago
The claims of existing social arrangements...

The claims of existing social arrangements and of self interest have been duly allowed for. We cannot at the end count them a second time because we do not like the result.

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Chapter III, Section 23, pg. 135
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months ago
Ethical ideas and sentiments have to...

Ethical ideas and sentiments have to be considered as parts of the phenomena of life at large. We have to deal with man as a product of evolution, with society as a product of evolution, and with moral phenomena as products of evolution.

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Ch. 1, Introductory
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
1 month 1 week ago
Full of gods means full of...

Full of gods means full of meaning, full of narration. The world becomes readable, like a picture.

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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
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
2 months ago
Under the natural course of things...

Under the natural course of things each citizen tends towards his fittest function. Those who are competent to the kind of work they undertake, succeed, and, in the average of cases, are advanced in proportion to their efficiency; while the incompetent, society soon finds out, ceases to employ, forces to try something easier, and eventually turns to use.

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Vol. 3, Ch. VII, Over-Legislation
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 3 weeks ago
Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance...

Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right, and toleration of movements from the Left.

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An Essay on Liberation Beacon Press, 1969, p. 109
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
I feel safer with a Pyrrho...

I feel safer with a Pyrrho than with a St. Paul, for a jesting wisdom is gentler than an unbridled sanctity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 3 weeks ago
One of the most marked features...

One of the most marked features about the law of mind is that it makes time to have a definite direction of flow from past to future. ...This makes one of the great contrasts between the law of mind and the law of physical force, where there is no more distinction between the two opposite directions in time than between moving northward and moving southward.

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Philosophical Maxims
Roger Scruton
Roger Scruton
3 weeks 2 days ago
Conservatives believe that our identities and...

Conservatives believe that our identities and values are formed through our relations with other people, and not through our relation with the state. The state is not an end but a means. Civil society is the end, and the state is the means to protect it. The social world emerges through free association, rooted in friendship and community life. And the customs and institutions that we cherish have grown from below, by the 'invisible hand' of co-operation. They have rarely been imposed from above by the work of politics, the role of which, for a conservative, is to reconcile our many aims, and not to dictate or control them.

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"Stand up for the real meaning of freedom," The Spectator
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
2 months ago
This method of mental training is,...

This method of mental training is, therefore, the immediate preparation for the moral; it completely destroys the root of immorality by never allowing sensuous enjoyment to become the motive. Formerly, that was the first motive to be stimulated and developed, because it was believed that otherwise the pupil could not be influenced or controlled at all.

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General Nature of New Eduction contiunued p. 31
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 week 6 days ago
The important thing....
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Main Content / General
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Ralph Waldo Emerson
3 months ago
I like a church, I like...

I like a church, I like a cowl, I love a prophet of the soul, And on my heart monastic aisles Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; Yet not for all his faith can see, Would I that cowled churchman be. Why should the vest on him allure, Which I could not on me endure?

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The Problem, st. 1
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
2 months ago
Russia was a slave in Europe...

Russia was a slave in Europe but would be a master in Asia.

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As quoted in "Dilemmas of Empire 1850-1918: Power, Territory, Identity" by Dominic Livien in Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 34, No.2 (April 1999), pp. 180
Philosophical Maxims
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