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Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
A man full of warm, speculative...

A man full of warm, speculative benevolence may wish his society otherwise constituted than he finds it, but a good patriot and a true politician always considers how he shall make the most of the existing materials of his country. A disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, would be my standard of a statesman. Everything else is vulgar in the conception, perilous in the execution.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Henry Huxley
Thomas Henry Huxley
1 week 3 days ago
Even in the important matter of...

Even in the important matter of cranial capacity, Men differ more widely from one another than they do from the Apes; while the lowest Apes differ as much, in proportion, from the highest, as the latter does from Man.

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Ch.2, p. 95
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 4 weeks ago
Do you see this egg? With...

Do you see this egg? With this you can topple every theological theory, every church or temple in the world. What is it, this egg, before the seed is introduced into it? An insentient mass. And after the seed has been introduced to into it? What is it then? An insentient mass. For what is the seed itself other than a crude and inanimate fluid? How is this mass to make a transition to a different structure, to sentience, to life? Through heat. And what will produce that heat in it? Motion. "Conversation Between D'Alembert and Diderot", as quoted in Selected Writings (1966) edited by Lester G. Crocker, and The Enlightenment and the Intellectual Foundations of Modern Culture (2004) by Louis K Dupré, p. 30 Variant translation: See this egg. It is with this that all the schools of theology and all the temples of the earth are to be overturned.

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As quoted in Diderot, Reason and Resonance (1982) by Élisabeth de Fontenay, p. 217
Philosophical Maxims
John Rawls
John Rawls
2 months 3 weeks ago
Yet it seems extraordinary that the...

Yet it seems extraordinary that the justice of increasing the expectations of the better placed by a billion dollars, say, should turn on whether the prospects of the least favored increase or decrease by a penny.

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Chapter III, Section 26, pg. 157
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
Having destroyed all my connections, burned...

Having destroyed all my connections, burned my bridges, I should feel a certain freedom, and in fact I do. One so intense I am afraid to rejoice in it.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 2 days ago
To call out for the hand...

To call out for the hand of the enemy is a rather extreme measure, yet a better one, I think, than to remain in continual fever over an accident that has no remedy. But since all the precautions that a man can take are full of uneasiness and uncertainty, it is better to prepare with fine assurance for the worst that can happen, and derive some consolation from the fact that we are not sure that it will happen.

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Ch. 25
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 3 weeks ago
I posit myself as rational, that...

I posit myself as rational, that is, as free. In doing so I have the representation of freedom. In the same undivided act I posit other free beings. Hence, I describe through my power of imagination a sphere of freedom, which these many separate beings divide amongst themselves. I do not ascribe to myself all the freedom which I have posited, because I must also posit other free beings, and must ascribe part of it to them. Thus, in appropriating freedom to myself, I at the same time restrict myself, by leaving freedom to others.

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P. 7-8
Philosophical Maxims
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Johann Gottlieb Fichte
1 month 3 weeks ago
The original thinking force of the...

The original thinking force of the universe progresses and develops itself in all possible determinations of which it is capable, just as the other original natural forces progress and assume all possible configurations. I am a particular determination of the formative force, like the plant; a particular determination of the peculiar motive force, like the animal; and in addition to this a determination of the thinking force: and the union of these three basic forces into one force, into one harmonious development, is the distinguishing characteristic of my species.

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P. Preuss, trans. (1987), p. 12
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
If I used to ask myself,...

If I used to ask myself, over a coffin, "what good did it do the occupant to be born?" I now put the same question about anyone alive.

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Philosophical Maxims
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
2 weeks 4 days ago
Much of junk culture has a...

Much of junk culture has a core of crisis - shoot-outs, conflagrations, bodies weltering in blood, naked embracers or rapist-stranglers. The sounds of junk culture are heard over a ground bass of extremism. Our entertainments swarm with specters of world crisis. Nothing moderate can have any claim to our attention.

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A Second Half Life (1991), p. 326
Philosophical Maxims
Pythagoras
Pythagoras
2 months 6 days ago
Abstain from animals….

Abstain from animals.

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Symbol 39
Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 2 weeks ago
For he that hath strength enough...

For he that hath strength enough to protect all, wants not sufficiency to oppresse all.

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De Cive (1642) Ch. 6
Philosophical Maxims
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
2 months 3 weeks ago
The good is the idea, or...

The good is the idea, or unity of the conception of the will with the particular will. Abstract right, well-being, the subjectivity of consciousness, and the contingency of external reality, are in their independent and separate existences superseded in this unity, although in their real essence they are contained in it and preserved. This unity is realized freedom, the absolute final cause of the world. Addition.-Every stage is properly the idea, but the earlier steps contain the idea only in more abstract form. The I, as person, is already the idea, although in its most abstract guise. The good is the idea more completely determined; it is the unity of the conception of will with the particular will. It is not something abstractly right, but has a real content, whose substance constitutes both right and well-being.

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Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Philosophy of Right translated by SW Dyde Queen's University Canada 1896 p. 123
Philosophical Maxims
Miguel de Unamuno
Miguel de Unamuno
1 month 1 week ago
Proceeding from ourselves, from our own...

Proceeding from ourselves, from our own human consciousness, the only consciousness which we feel from within and in which feeling is identical with being, we attribute some sort of consciousness, more or less dim, to all living things, and even to the stones themselves, for they also live. And the evolution of organic beings is simply the struggle to realize fullness of consciousness through suffering, a continual aspiration to be others without ceasing to be themselves, to break and yet to preserve their proper limits.

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes
1 month 2 weeks ago
Christian Kings may erre in deducing...

Christian Kings may erre in deducing a Consequence, but who shall Judge?

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The Third Part, Chapter 43, p. 330
Philosophical Maxims
John Dewey
John Dewey
1 month 2 weeks ago
Just because emotion is essential to...

Just because emotion is essential to that act of expression which produces a work of art, it is easy for inaccurate analysis to misconceive its mode of operation and conclude that the work of art has emotion for its significant content. One may cry out with joy or even weep upon seeing a friend from whom one has been long separated. The outcome is not an expressive object -- save to the onlooker. But if the emotion leads one to gather material that is affiliated to the mood which is aroused, a poem may result. In the direct outburst, an objective situation is the stimulus, the cause, of the emotion. In the poem, objective material becomes the content and matter of the emotion, not just its evocative occasion.

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pp. 71-72
Philosophical Maxims
comfortdragon
comfortdragon
2 months ago
He who created...
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Confucius
Confucius
3 months 2 weeks ago
Better a diamond with a flaw...

Better a diamond with a flaw than a pebble without.

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Philosophical Maxims
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov
3 months 3 weeks ago
How then to enforce peace? Not...

How then to enforce peace? Not by reason, certainly, nor by education. If a man could not look at the fact of peace and the fact of war and choose the former in preference to the latter, what additional argument could persuade him? What could be more eloquent as a condemnation of war than war itself? What tremendous feat of dialectic could carry with it a tenth the power of a single gutted ship with its ghastly cargo?

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Philosophical Maxims
Adam Smith
Adam Smith
2 months 4 weeks ago
The greatest improvement in the productive...

The greatest improvement in the productive powers of labour, and the greatest part of skill, dexterity, and judgment with which it is any where directed, or applied, seem to have been the effects of the division of labour.

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Chapter I, p. 7
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is unjust to call imaginary...

It is unjust to call imaginary the diseases which are, on the contrary, only too real, since they proceed from our mind, the only regulator of our equilibrium and our health.

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Philosophical Maxims
Simone Weil
Simone Weil
1 month 1 week ago
If you say to someone who...

If you say to someone who has ears to hear: "What you are doing to me is not just," you may touch and awaken at its source the spirit of attention and love. But it is not the same with words like, "I have the right..." or "you have no right to..." They evoke a latent war and awaken the spirit of contention.

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p. 63
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
Irons and the unbreathable air of...

Irons and the unbreathable air of this world strip us of everything, except the freedom to kill ourselves; and this freedom grants us a strength and pride to triumph over the loads which overwhelm us.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks 3 days ago
When I started life Hegelianism was...

When I started life Hegelianism was the basis of everything: it was in the air, found expression in magazine and newspaper articles, in novels and essays, in art, in histories, in sermons, and in conversation. A man unacquainted with Hegel had no right to speak: he who wished to know the truth studied Hegel. Everything rested on him; and suddenly forty years have gone by and there is nothing left of him, he is not even mentioned - as though he had never existed. And what is most remarkable is that, like pseudo-Christianity, Hegelianism fell not because anyone refuted it, but because it suddenly became evident that neither the one nor the other was needed by our learned, educated world.

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Chapter XXIX
Philosophical Maxims
Epictetus
Epictetus
3 months 1 week ago
Although life is a matter of...

Although life is a matter of indifference, the use which you make of it is not a matter of indifference.

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Book II, ch. 6, 1.
Philosophical Maxims
Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft
1 month 3 weeks ago
The endeavor to keep alive any...

The endeavor to keep alive any hoary establishment beyond its natural date is often pernicious and always useless.

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The French Revolution, Bk. V, ch. 4
Philosophical Maxims
Denis Diderot
Denis Diderot
1 month 4 weeks ago
We are far more liable to...

We are far more liable to catch the vices than the virtues of our associates.

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As quoted in Thesaurus of Epigrams: A New Classified Collection of Witty Remarks, Bon Mots and Toasts (1942) by Edmund Fuller
Philosophical Maxims
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhan
3 weeks 2 days ago
Media, by altering the environment, evoke...

Media, by altering the environment, evoke in us unique ratios of sense perception...When these ratios change, men change.

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Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
1 week 1 day ago
corporate globalization is really about an...

corporate globalization is really about an aggressive privatization of the water, biodiversity, and food systems of the Earth, when these communities declare sovereignty and act on that sovereignty, they have developed a powerful response to globalization. Living democracy then is the democracy that is custodian of the living wealth on which people depend.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 3 weeks ago
Blood doubly unites us, for we...

Blood doubly unites us, for we share the same blood and we have spilled blood.

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Orestes to Electra, Act 2
Philosophical Maxims
Jean Paul Sartre
Jean Paul Sartre
2 months 3 weeks ago
You have stolen my face from...

You have stolen my face from me: you know it and I no longer do.

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Act 1, sc. 5
Philosophical Maxims
Baruch Spinoza
Baruch Spinoza
2 months 4 weeks ago
Man can, indeed, act contrarily to...

Man can, indeed, act contrarily to the decrees of God, as far as they have been written like laws in the minds of ourselves or the prophets, but against that eternal decree of God, which is written in universal nature, and has regard to the course of nature as a whole, he can do nothing.

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Ch. 2, Of Natural Right
Philosophical Maxims
Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce
1 month 3 weeks ago
Now, let there be an indefinite...

Now, let there be an indefinite succession of these inferential acts of comparative perception; and it is plain that the last moment will contain objectively the whole series. Let there be, not merely an indefinite succession, but a continuous flow of inference through a finite time; and the result will be a mediate objective consciousness of the whole time in the last moment. In this last moment, the whole series will be recognized, or known as known before.

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Philosophical Maxims
Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy
3 weeks 3 days ago
People try to do all sorts...

People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing-refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.

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p. 210
Philosophical Maxims
Søren Kierkegaard
Søren Kierkegaard
3 months 3 weeks ago
I have worked for this restlessness...

I have worked for this restlessness oriented toward inward deepening. But without authority. Instead of conceitedly making myself out to be a witness for the truth and causing others rashly to want to be the same, I am an unauthorized poet who influences by means of the ideas.

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Philosophical Maxims
Jean Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard
3 weeks 6 days ago
The close-up of a face is...

The close-up of a face is as obscene as a sexual organ seen from up close. It is a sexual organ. The promiscuity of the detail, the zoom-in, takes on a sexual value.

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(p. 43)
Philosophical Maxims
Bertrand Russell
Bertrand Russell
2 months 3 weeks ago
Too little liberty brings stagnation, and...

Too little liberty brings stagnation, and too much brings chaos.

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Authority and the Individual (1949), p. 37
Philosophical Maxims
Herbert Marcuse
Herbert Marcuse
1 month 2 weeks ago
The closed language does not demonstrate...

The closed language does not demonstrate and explain-it communicates decision, dictum, command. Where it defines, the definition becomes "separation of good from evil;" it establishes unquestionable.

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p. 101
Philosophical Maxims
C. S. Lewis
C. S. Lewis
2 months 3 weeks ago
Where we find a difficulty we...

Where we find a difficulty we may always expect that a discovery awaits us. Where there is cover we hope for game.

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Reflections on the Psalms (1958), ch. III: Cursings
Philosophical Maxims
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
1 month 1 week ago
The "dreams of youth" have become...

The "dreams of youth" have become a proverb. That organisations, early rich, fall far short of their promise has been repeated to satiety. But is it extraordinary that it should be so? For do we ever utilise this heroism? Look how it lives upon itself and perishes for lack of food. We do not know what to do with it. We had rather that it should not be there. Often we laugh at it. Always we find it troublesome. Look at the poverty of our life! Can we expect anything else but poor creatures to come out of it?

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Philosophical Maxims
Thomas Browne
Thomas Browne
2 months ago
I look upon you as a...

I look upon you as a gem of the old rock. Dedication

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Philosophical Maxims
Diogenes of Sinope
Diogenes of Sinope
2 months 2 weeks ago
To Xeniades, who had purchased Diogenes...

To Xeniades, who had purchased Diogenes at the slave market, he said, "Come, see that you obey orders."

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Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 36
Philosophical Maxims
Vandana Shiva
Vandana Shiva
1 week 1 day ago
There is a strong affinity between...

There is a strong affinity between the forces of empire and a politics of hate that justifies policies of domination and exclusion. So long as people's attention is focused on fear and hatred of foreigners or members of a particular religious group, such as Muslims, they are distracted from organizing to deal with the system of institutional domination and exploitation that is the real source of their insecurity.

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Philosophical Maxims
Confucius
Confucius
3 months 2 weeks ago
Among the appliances to transform the...

Among the appliances to transform the people, sound and appearances are but trivial influences.

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Philosophical Maxims
Colin Wilson
Colin Wilson
1 month 1 week ago
These men traveling down to the...

These men traveling down to the City in the morning, reading their newspapers or staring at advertisements above the opposite seats, they have no doubt of who they are. Inscribe on the placard in place of the advertisement for corn-plasters, Elliot's lines: We are the hollow men

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Philosophical Maxims
Max Scheler
Max Scheler
1 month 2 weeks ago
Antiquity believed that the forces of...

Antiquity believed that the forces of love in the universe were limited. Therefore they were to be used sparingly,and everyone was to be loved only according to his value.

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L. Coser, trans. (1961), p. 94
Philosophical Maxims
John Locke
John Locke
2 months 3 weeks ago
If pains be to be taken...

If pains be to be taken to give him a manly air and assurance betimes, it is chiefly as a fence to his virtue when he goes into the world under his own conduct.

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Sec. 70
Philosophical Maxims
Emil Cioran
Emil Cioran
1 month 3 weeks ago
Life is not, and death is...

Life is not, and death is a dream. Suffering has invented them both as self-justification. Man alone is torn between an unreality and an illusion.

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Philosophical Maxims
Michel de Montaigne
Michel de Montaigne
3 months 2 days ago
The plague of man is boasting...

The plague of man is boasting of his knowledge.

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Ch. 12 (tr. ?)
Philosophical Maxims
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke
1 month 3 weeks ago
It is reconciled in policy; and...

It is reconciled in policy; and politics ought to be adjusted, not to human reasonings, but to human nature; of which the reason is but a part; and by no means the greatest part.

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Observations on a Late Publication on the Present State of the Nation (1769), page 78
Philosophical Maxims
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