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Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 4 weeks ago
Computers can do better than ever...

Computers can do better than ever what needn't be done at all. Making sense is still a human monopoly.

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(p. 109)
Philosophical Maxims
Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon
4 months 1 week ago
Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction,...

Knowledge, that tendeth but to satisfaction, is but as a courtesan, which is for pleasure, and not for fruit or generation.

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Valerius Terminus: Of the Interpretation of Nature (ca. 1603), in Works, Vol. 1, p. 83; The Works of Francis Bacon (1819), Vol. 2, p. 133
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
1 month 4 weeks ago
Electricity does not centralize, but decentralizes.

Electricity does not centralize, but decentralizes.

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(p. 36)
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
4 months 1 day ago
The great thing however is, in...

The great thing however is, in the show of the temporal and the transient to recognize the substance which is immanent and the eternal which is present. For the work of Reason (which is synonymous with the Idea) when considered in its own actuality, is to simultaneously enter external existence and emerge with an infinite wealth of forms, phenomena and phases - a multiplicity that envelops its essential rational kernel with a motley outer rind with which our ordinary consciousness is earliest at home. It is this rind that the Concept must penetrate before Reason can find its own inward pulse and feel it still beating even in the outward phases. But this infinite variety of circumstances which is formed in this element of externality by the light of the rational essence shining in it - all this infinite material, with its regulatory laws - is not the object of philosophy....To comprehend what is, is the task of philosophy: and what is is Reason.

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Works, VII, 17.
Philosophical Maxims
Karl Marx
Karl Marx
4 months 1 day ago
Classical political economy nearly touches the...

Classical political economy nearly touches the true relation of things, without, however,consciously formulating it. This it cannot so long as it sticks in its bourgeois skin.

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Vol. I, Ch. 19, pg. 594.
Philosophical Maxims
Jeremy Bentham
Jeremy Bentham
4 months 3 days ago
Pleasure is in itself a good;...

Pleasure is in itself a good; nay, even setting aside immunity from pain, the only good: pain is in itself an evil; and, indeed, without exception, the only evil; or else the words good and evil have no meaning. And this is alike true of every sort of pain, and of every sort of pleasure.

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Ch. 10: Of Motives
Philosophical Maxims
Novalis
Novalis
2 months 4 weeks ago
To become properly acquainted with a...

To become properly acquainted with a truth, we must first have disbelieved it, and disputed against it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Hannah Arendt
Hannah Arendt
3 months 4 weeks ago
Kant stated defensively that he had...

Kant stated defensively that he had "found it necessary to deny knowledge. . . to make room for faith," but he had not made room for faith; he had made room for thought, and he had not "denied knowledge" but separated knowledge from thinking.

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p. 14
Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 day ago
"Fire is the first and final...

"Fire is the first and final mask of my God. We dance and weep between two enormous pyres." Our thoughts and our bodies flash and glitter with reflected light. Between the two pyres I stand serenely, my brain unshaken amid the vertigo, and I say: "Time is most short and space most narrow between these two pyres, the rhythm of this life is most sluggish, and I have no time, nor a place to dance in. I cannot wait." Then all at once the rhythm of the earth becomes a vertigo, time disappears, the moment whirls, becomes eternity, and every point in space - insect or star or idea - turns into dance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 month 2 weeks ago
Scientific men get an awkward habit...

Scientific men get an awkward habit - no, I won't call it that, for it is a valuable habit - of believing nothing unless there is evidence for it; and they have a way of looking upon belief which is not based upon evidence, not only as illogical, but as immoral.

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Thomas Henry Huxley. "Lectures on Evolution Title: This is Essay# 3 from" Science and Hebrew Tradition." (1882); as cited in: William Trufant Foster, (1908) Argumentation and debating, p. 55
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 1 day ago
I came into this world, not...

I came into this world, not chiefly to make this a good place to live in, but to live in it, be it good or bad.

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Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
2 months 2 weeks ago
I hope, reader, that some time...

I hope, reader, that some time while our tragedy is still playing, in some interval between acts, we shall meet again. And we shall recognize one another. And forgive me if I have troubled you more than was needful and inevitable, more than I intended to do when I took up my pen proposing to distract you from your distractions. And may God deny you peace, but give you glory!

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Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 1 day ago
Most men pursue pleasure with such...

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste that they hurry past it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 day ago
While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty...

While experiencing happiness, we have difficulty in being conscious of it. Only when the happiness is past and we look back on it we do suddenly realize - sometimes with astonishment - how happy we had been.

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Ch. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
5 months 1 day ago
When Christianity came into the world...

When Christianity came into the world the task was simply to proclaim Christianity. The same is the case wherever Christianity is introduced into a country the religion of which is not Christianity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 day ago
Children are made to learn bits...

Children are made to learn bits of Shakespeare by heart, with the result that ever after they associate him with pedantic boredom. If they could meet him in the flesh, full of jollity and ale, they would be astonished, and if they had never heard of him before they might be led by his jollity to see what he had written. But if at school they had been inoculated against him, they will never be able to enjoy him. The same sort of thing applies to music lessons. Human beings have certain capacities for spontaneous enjoyment, but moralists and pedants possess themselves of the apparatus of these enjoyments, and having extracted what they consider the poison of pleasure they leave them dreary and dismal and devoid of everything that gives them value. Shakespeare did not write with a view to boring school-children; he wrote with a view to delighting his audiences. If he does not give you delight, you had better ignore him.

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Part III: Man and Himself, Ch. 20: The Happy Man, p. 201
Philosophical Maxims
William James
William James
4 months ago
Without risks or prizes for the...

Without risks or prizes for the darer, history would be insipid indeed; and there is a type of military character which every one feels that the race should never cease to breed, for everyone is sensitive to its superiority. The duty is incumbent on mankind, of keeping military character in stock - if keeping them, if not for use, then as ends in themselves and as pure pieces of perfection, - so that Roosevelt's weaklings and mollycoddles may not end by making everything else disappear from the face of nature.

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Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks 1 day ago
It is disgraceful, instead of proceeding...

It is disgraceful, instead of proceeding ahead, to be carried along, and then suddenly, amid the whirlpool of events, to ask in a dazed way: "How did I get into this condition?"

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Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
4 months 1 day ago
Good nature is, of all moral...

Good nature is, of all moral qualities, the one that the world needs most, and good nature is the result of ease and security, not of a life of arduous struggle. Modern methods of production have given us the possibility of ease and security for all; we have chosen, instead, to have overwork for some and starvation for the others. Hitherto we have continued to be as energetic as we were before there were machines; in this we have been foolish, but there is no reason to go on being foolish for ever.

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Ch. 1: In Praise of Idleness
Philosophical Maxims
Max Horkheimer
Max Horkheimer
2 months 3 weeks ago
The hypostasis of the particular methods...

The hypostasis of the particular methods of procedure employed by natural science ... results in the view that all theoretical differences which rest on historically conditioned antagonisms of interest are to be settles by a "crucial experiment" rather than by struggle and counter-struggle. The harmonious relation of individuals to one another becomes a fact, therefore, that has even more general character than a law of nature.

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p. 148.
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
1 month 1 day ago
Fertilisation of the soul....
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Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
3 months 1 week ago
Of the eternal incorporeal substance nothing...

Of the eternal incorporeal substance nothing is changed, is formed or deformed, but there always remains only that thing which cannot be a subject of dissolution, since it is not possible that it be a subject of composition, and therefore, either of itself or by accident, it cannot be said to die.

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As translated by Arthur Imerti
Philosophical Maxims
Seneca the Younger
Seneca the Younger
2 weeks 1 day ago
Drunkenness is nothing….

Drunkenness is nothing but voluntary madness.

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Line 18.
Philosophical Maxims
Richard Rorty
Richard Rorty
3 months 3 weeks ago
As long as we try to...

As long as we try to project from the relative and conditioned to the absolute and unconditioned, we shall keep the pendulum swinging between dogmatism and skepticism. The only way to stop this increasingly tiresome pendulum swing is to change our conception of what philosophy is good for. But that is not something which will be accomplished by a few neat arguments. It will be accomplished, if it ever is, by a long, slow process of cultural change - that is to say, of change in common sense, changes in the intuitions available for being pumped up by philosophical arguments.

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Introduction to Truth and Progress: Philosophical Papers, Volume 3 (1998).
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
4 months 2 weeks ago
Do you suppose that you can...

Do you suppose that you can do the things you do now, and yet be a philosopher? Do you suppose that you can eat in the same fashion, drink in the same fashion, give way to anger and to irritation, just as you do now?

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Book III, ch. 15, 10 (= Enchiridion 29, 10).
Philosophical Maxims
Albert Schweitzer
Albert Schweitzer
1 week 4 days ago
May the men who hold the...

May the men who hold the destiny of peoples in their hands, studiously avoid anything that might cause the present situation to deteriorate and become even more dangerous. May they take to heart the words of the Apostle Paul: "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." These words are valid not only for individuals, but for nations as well. May these nations, in their efforts to maintain peace, do their utmost to give the spirit time to grow and to act.

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Philosophical Maxims
Karl Popper
Karl Popper
3 months 4 weeks ago
I have changed my mind about...

I have changed my mind about the testability and logical status of the theory of natural selection; and I am glad to have an opportunity to make a recantation.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 4 weeks ago
Well, it was healthy to miss...

Well, it was healthy to miss once in a while. It kept self-confidence balanced at a point safely short of arrogance.

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Philosophical Maxims
Auguste Comte
Auguste Comte
3 months 5 days ago
The mathematical thermology created by Fourier...

The mathematical thermology created by Fourier may tempt us to hope that, as he has estimated the temperature of the space in which we move, me may in time ascertain the mean temperature of the heavenly bodies: but I regard this order of facts as for ever excluded from our recognition. We can never learn their internal constitution, nor, in regard to some of them, how heat is absorbed by their atmosphere. We may therefore define Astronomy as the science by which we discover the laws of the geometrical and mechanical phenomena presented by the heavenly bodies.

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Book II: Astronomy, Ch. I: General View
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
2 months 3 weeks ago
What a judgment upon the living,...

What a judgment upon the living, if it is true, as has been maintained, that what dies has never existed!

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Philosophical Maxims
Jesus
Jesus
2 months 3 weeks ago
And that servant, which knew his...

And that servant, which knew his lord's will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes.

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Luke 12:47 (KJV)
Philosophical Maxims
Wendell Berry
Wendell Berry
Just now
The ability to speak exactly is...

The ability to speak exactly is intimately related to the ability to know exactly.

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Imagination in Place
Philosophical Maxims
Michel Foucault
Michel Foucault
3 months 3 weeks ago
It was an important moment. The...

It was an important moment. The old partners of the spectacle of punishment, the body and the blood, gave way. A new character came of the scene, masked. It was the end of a certain kind of tragedy; comedy began, with shadow play, faceless voices, impalpable entities. The apparatus of punitive justice must now bite into this bodiless reality.

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pp. 17
Philosophical Maxims
John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill
4 months 1 day ago
It appears... that a work similar...

It appears... that a work similar in its object and general conception to that of Adam Smith, but adapted to the more extended knowledge and improved ideas of the present age, is the kind of contribution which Political Economy at present requires. The Wealth of Nations is in many parts obsolete, and in all, imperfect. Political Economy... has grown up almost from infancy since the time of Adam Smith; and the philosophy of society... has advanced many steps beyond the point at which he left it.

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Preface, 1848
Philosophical Maxims
B. F. Skinner
B. F. Skinner
3 weeks 5 days ago
It is a mistake to suppose...

It is a mistake to suppose that the whole issue is how to free man. The issue is to improve the way in which he is controlled.

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"I have been misunderstood" An interview with B.F.Skinner, Center Magazine (March/April 1972), pp. 63
Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
4 months 4 weeks ago
What a human being believes, however,...

What a human being believes, however, no matter with what ardor, is not necessarily objective truth.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Babington Macaulay
Thomas Babington Macaulay
1 month 2 weeks ago
I have no knowledge of either...

I have no knowledge of either Sanscrit or Arabic. But I have done what I could to form a correct estimate of their value. I have read translations of the most celebrated Arabic and Sanscrit works. I have conversed, both here and at home, with men distinguished by their proficiency in the Eastern tongues. I am quite ready to take the oriental learning at the valuation of the orientalists themselves. I have never found one among them who could deny that a single shelf of a good European library was worth the whole native literature of India and Arabia. The intrinsic superiority of the Western literature is indeed fully admitted by those members of the committee who support the oriental plan of education.

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Philosophical Maxims
Nikos Kazantzakis
Nikos Kazantzakis
1 day ago
Death gestured with his hands and...

Death gestured with his hands and bade the king thrice welcome.

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Book VIII, line 168
Philosophical Maxims
Emma Goldman
Emma Goldman
2 months 1 week ago
Direct action, having proven effective along...

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

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Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
3 months 5 days ago
I believe in God, although I...

I believe in God, although I live very happily with atheists... It is very important not to mistake hemlock for parsley; but not at all so to believe or not in God.

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As quoted in Against the Faith (1985) by Jim Herrick, p. 75
Philosophical Maxims
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
Fyodor Dostoyevsky
3 months 1 day ago
They showed me their trees, and...

They showed me their trees, and I could not understand the intense love with which they looked at them; it was as though they were talking with creatures like themselves. And perhaps I shall not be mistaken if I say that they conversed with them. Yes, they had found their language, and I am convinced that the trees understood them. They looked at all Nature like that - at the animals who lived in peace with them and did not attack them, but loved them, conquered by their love. They pointed to the stars and told me something about them which I could not understand, but I am convinced that they were somehow in touch with the stars, not only in thought, but by some living channel.

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Philosophical Maxims
Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
1 month 3 weeks ago
Evidence is the only good reason...

Evidence is the only good reason to believe anything.

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Interview shown in AlJazeera ,
Philosophical Maxims
Byung-Chul Han
Byung-Chul Han
2 months 1 week ago
When we subordinate rest to work,...

When we subordinate rest to work, we ignore the divine.

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Philosophical Maxims
Publilius Syrus
Publilius Syrus
1 month 4 weeks ago
Even when the wound is healed,...

Even when the wound is healed, the scar remains.

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Maxim 236
Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
4 months 1 week ago
There must then be something that...

There must then be something that is better, and that must be God. When you see a stately and stupendous edifice, though you do not know who is the owner of it, you would yet conclude it was not built for rats. And this divine structure, that we behold of the celestial palace, have we not reason to believe that it is the residence of some possessor, who is much greater than we?

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Ch. 12, tr. Cotton, rev. W. Carew Hazlitt, 1877
Philosophical Maxims
Henry David Thoreau
Henry David Thoreau
4 months 1 day ago
Politics is, as it were, the...

Politics is, as it were, the gizzard of society, full of grit and gravel, and the two political parties are its two opposite halves, - sometimes split into quarters, it may be, which grind on each other. Not only individuals, but States, have thus a confirmed dyspepsia, which expresses itself, you can imagine by what sort of eloquence. Thus our life is not altogether a forgetting, but also, alas! to a great extent, a remembering of that which we should never have been conscious of, certainly not in our waking hours. Why should we not meet, not always as dyspeptics, to tell our bad dreams, but sometimes as eupeptics, to congratulate each other on the ever glorious morning? I do not make an exorbitant demand, surely.

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p. 495
Philosophical Maxims
Susan Neiman
Susan Neiman
1 month 3 weeks ago
Far less import than your belief...

Far less import than your belief of whether god exists is what you think your belief entails. Does it direct your behaviour by rules and commandments that are set out before you or does it require you to think them through yourself? Does it require you to try to make sense of the world, or does it give up on sense itself? And I think these are the crucial distinctions. Not whether you add belief in a god to them.

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
4 months 4 days ago
The real and effectual discipline which...

The real and effectual discipline which is exercised over a workman is that of his customers. It is the fear of losing their employment which restrains his frauds and corrects his negligence.

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Chapter X, Part II.
Philosophical Maxims
Heraclitus
Heraclitus
4 months 2 weeks ago
War is the father and king...

War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free. War is the father and king of all, and has produced some as gods and some as men, and has made some slaves and some free.

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Philosophical Maxims
St. Augustine of Hippo
St. Augustine of Hippo
4 months 2 weeks ago
Will is to grace as the...

Will is to grace as the horse is to the rider.

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Philosophical Maxims
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